In 1753 Clive returned to England, and two years later went back to India as governor of Fort St. David, in the Madras presidency. Of his proceedings in this government and his further successful military enterprises, which went so far to win India for England, Arbuthnot, late member of the Council of India, gives an authoritative account, based on the fullest information available at the close of the nineteenth century. Clive returned to the Madras Presidency at a critical moment. War with France was imminent, and broke out in the course of a few months. The very day that Clive assumed the government of Fort St. David, Calcutta was captured by the Nawab[40] of Bengal, and the tragedy of the Black Hole took place. The acquisition of Calcutta by the East India Company was somewhat later than that of Madras. It dates from 1686, when the representatives of the company, driven by the Mogul authorities from Hugli, where they had established a factory, moved under the leadership of Job Charnock some twenty-six miles down the river to Satanati, now one of the northern suburbs of Calcutta. Ten years afterward they built the original Fort William, and in 1700 they purchased the villages of Satanti, Kalikata, and Govindpur from the son of the Emperor. In 1707 the East India Company declared Calcutta a separate presidency. Here, surrounded by the richest districts in India, amid a teeming population, on the banks of a river which was the chief highway of Eastern commerce, the servants of the company drove a thriving trade, threatened only, but never actually assailed, by the raids of the Mahrattas, the memory of which is still kept alive by the famous Mahratta ditch. They were in the same relation to the Nawab of Bengal as the servants of the company at Madras were to the Nawab of the Carnatic. In April, 1756, Aliverdi Khan, who was a just and strong ruler, died, and was succeeded by his grandson, Suraj ud Daulah, a youth under twenty years of age, whose training had been of the worst description. One of the whims of this youth was hatred toward the English, and he had not been two months on the throne when he found a pretext for indulging this sentiment in the fact that the English, in anticipation of difficulties with the French, were strengthening the fortifications of Fort William. On June 4th he seized the English factory at Kasimbazar, and on the 15th attacked Calcutta. The women and children in the fort were removed on board ship on the 18th, and on the same day the Governor, Mr. Drake, and the military commandant, Captain Minchin, deserted their posts, and to their lasting disgrace betook themselves to the ships. Mr. Holwell, a member of the council, assumed command in the fort, but on the 25th the place was taken.